1. Field
The subject disclosure relates generally to wireless communication and, more particularly, to a learning approach to establishing, and utilizing, a persistent scheduling in a data-packet based wireless communication.
2. Background
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, data, and so on. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting simultaneous communication of multiple terminals with one or more base stations. Multiple-access communication relies on sharing available system resources (e.g., bandwidth and transmit power). Examples of multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems.
Communication between a terminal in a wireless system (e.g., a multiple-access system) and a base station is effected through transmissions over a wireless link comprised of a forward link and a reverse link. Such communication link may be established via a single-input-single-output (SISO), multiple-input-single-output (MISO), or a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) system. A MIMO system consists of transmitter(s) and receiver(s) equipped, respectively, with multiple (NT) transmit antennas and multiple (NR) receive antennas for data transmission. SISO and MISO systems are particular instances of a MIMO system. A MIMO channel formed by NT transmit and NR receive antennas may be decomposed into Nv independent channels, which are also referred to as spatial channels, where Nv≦min{NT,NR}. Each of the Nv independent channels corresponds to a dimension. The MIMO system can provide improved performance (e.g., higher throughput, greater capacity, or improved reliability) if the additional dimensionalities created by the multiple transmit and receive antennas are utilized.
Regardless the peculiarities of the many available wireless communication systems, efficient scheduling is necessary to maintain or exceed a planned quality of service, or optimize sector/cell performance. Scheduling strategies that result in reducing communication overhead typically associated with control signaling are conduits to efficient scheduling. Other scheduling strategies, such as those based on communication heuristics can also lead to effective scheduling. Such scheduling strategies, however, generally fail to adapt to rapidly changing communication environments wherein multiple data flows are granted and revoked periodically. Therefore, there is a need in the art for efficient scheduling techniques that are versatile to substantial variations in traffic flow.